With both the wind and tide against us, we decided to paddle around No Name Key for our Friday adventure. This was not our finest hour: we forgot the sunscreen. Although we completed our course in under 4 hours, we were burnt to a crisp and exhausted at the end of it.
We launched from the canal in back of Vince and Maya’s. It’s an easy launch and a pleasant paddle through their neighborhood to get to Doctor’s Arm and Pine Key Bight headed to the Bogie Channel that runs between Big Pine and No Name Keys. It was a very hard start pushing against all that air and water, but once we crossed under the No Name Bridge, it was another story. It was like landing in Oz! The current and wind both seemed to disappear, the still water made it easy to see the fish and corals, and it was an easy paddle – at least, it was easy until we made the right hand turn to head east along the north side of No Name. Then the current was working against us again, and the wind was still strong.
But in spite of that, there’s a lot to recommend this paddle. First, Pine Key Bight is not huge, and it did not take us long to paddle across it in spite of the wind and water. Second, once we got north of the bridge, it was absolutely wonderful. We watched a small nurse shark swim by, Steve saw a ray (I think I saw it but I’m not sure), and the island itself is bordered by beautiful mangroves. We never know what we’ll see swimming among those roots! There are always fish and hermit crabs, often sharks, and I’m sure we are seeing only a small fraction of the life that makes its home there.
Even on the north side where the wind seemed strongest, we enjoyed paddling past areas that looked too remote for development. I noticed power lines, which surprised me because when we first started visiting this island, there was no power hook up. You really had to boondock to live on No Name Key! Water was collected in cisterns then, but now there is city water as well as electricity. This explains some of the HUGE homes we noticed — I can’t imagine these homes existing without plenty of air conditioning and running water.
Along the east side of the island, which appears to have remained largely undeveloped, we noticed a great deal of debris remaining from Hurricane Irma, which struck over a year-and-a-half ago. Talking to Vince about it later, he explained that the mangroves which were killed by the storm are releasing their salts as they decay, creating micro-environments of very high salinity, and this creates problems for new growth. It will be a long process of recovery for these islands, and some of the smaller picnic islands will probably never come back.
As we made the turn to the south side of No Name Key, the tide was nearly slack and we had an easier time than we did on the north side. The water was clear and calm, so Steve helped me enjoy a short swim. I love rolling out of my kayak into clear, cool water, and I’m so happy we learned how to get ourselves back into the kayaks so we can enjoy those refreshing swims.
There was nothing remarkable about our return across the Bight to Big Pine, so I’ll just leave it at this: we had a challenging paddle and earned impressive sunburns doing it. It was worth the sting, though, and next time we will schedule things so that we’re paddling with the current, not against it. And we’ll bring the sunscreen.